Start getting real leads, not just fan girls

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Being visible is not the same thing as creating demand or buyer readiness.
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You can have people watching and commenting and sharing and telling other people how amazing you are, telling you how amazing you are, while your actual sales pipeline continues to suffer.
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And that's exactly what we're about to go over in this episode.
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So welcome back to Think Like a CMO, the podcast for entrepreneurs who are ready to stop doing random acts of marketing and to start thinking like the chief marketing officer your business actually needs.
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I'm your host, Sarah Gemmel.
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I'm a marketing strategist and consultant helping small business owners to build marketing ecosystems that actually create predictable and reliable results.
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Around here, we talk about what it really looks like to step into your role as the CMO, to start seeing the big picture, to lead your marketing with strategy, and to stop wasting time on productive, busy work that isn't actually getting you anywhere.
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So buckle up, this is all no fluff, honest conversations, potent strategies, and practical insights that you can use right now to get your marketing working smarter.
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So, right now on any given week, I do about two to four sales calls a week with Perspective Leads.
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We're running about 15 to 20 clients that we support in their marketing at the time of this recording.
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And just in addition to all the conversations I've had with friends and colleagues, and also my own experience with this about four years ago is the fangirl problem.
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The fangirl problem is a common theme coming up in all of these places.
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Client conversations, sales calls, friend conversations, and like I said, I dealt with it.
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The fangirl problem is like people know you, they like you, they follow you, they engage with you, and you get all these comments like I love you, and you're so pretty, and you're so inspirational, and you're so cool.
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But that admiration doesn't automatically turn into a buying decision.
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And you're coming to me and you're like, Sarah, girl, I don't need more fans.
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I need more of the right people actually raising their hand to work with me, right?
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Like, I need to actually feed this pipeline.
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This is something that's also near and dear to my heart because I struggled so hard with this about four years ago.
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About four years ago, I randomly packed my shit.
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I packed up my belongings, my cats, my horses, my pickup truck, and I moved from Philly to Georgia without knowing anyone here.
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And when I went through that transition or that move, I also went through a shift in the business where I'm like, you know what?
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I'm really gonna focus on networking.
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And I'm gonna focus on running up a paid networking group, and I'm gonna teach people how to get more referrals and to actually make more money from networking.
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It was something that I became really well known for, and people knew me, they loved my perspective on it.
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But one of the things that when I made this shift, one of the biggest things I fought for my life on, okay, not to be dramatic, is the ability to market it successfully.
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I found that like when I did a free workshop where I spoke about it in coffee chats or I spoke about on social media, people ate it up.
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They loved my approach to networking, but on the back end, it wasn't turning into leads or revenue.
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And one thing I had to figure out quickly, okay, because at the time I'm single with no kids, I am 100% responsible for my own bills.
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This is my full-time job.
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I need to figure this shit out because I need to get paid to be able to keep my lights on.
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You feel me?
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And one of the things I had to figure out was how can I go from having fans to actually getting people to make a buying decision?
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Because people who liked what I had to say, they were ideal clients.
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They were people I knew could benefit from what I had to offer, and I knew I could help them.
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I also know they needed, I knew that they needed the help, right?
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So the first and foremost shift is realizing that visibility does not automatically equal demand or buyer readiness.
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I actually just recently saw this quote on like TikTok or Instagram, wherever I was in a scroll hole, and it was like visibility and attention equals money.
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And I cringed and my butthole clenched a little bit because that is so not accurate.
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I have seen service providers like go viral online and it doesn't at all feed their pipeline.
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I've seen service providers have a great engaged audience and it doesn't bring them leads or revenue.
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Visibility is the first step, right?
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We do need visibility 100%, but that doesn't automatically mean that they are going to see the value in what we do or be ready to actually buy.
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The difference between the two, the thing that makes attention and visibility turn into actual lead flow is taking someone from I like this person to oh, this person can actually help me solve a problem I'm looking to solve.
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So the goal is not to just be seen, it's to create movement.
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The next shift is in your content.
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And we don't talk about content in a way that's just social media, but think about anywhere that you are marketing that requires content.
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So that could be something like blog, podcast, Pinterest, uh, social media, email, anything like that.
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At the end of the day, whatever you create for marketing has to be about the target audience, it has to be about them.
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Something that's really trendy right now in marketing, it has been for the last few years, is this idea of storytelling and personal branding.
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Now there's no butt to that statement.
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Those things are important and they work great.
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But at the end of the day, everything we do has to be related back to them.
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What is their problem?
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What is the solution they're looking for?
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What is their daily experience?
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So even when you're sharing your story or your successes, it's less about look at me and here's what I did, and making it more about here's what this means for you.
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Your content also needs to help them make sense of their problem.
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I've noticed in just helping at this point over 1500 business owners with their marketing that a lot of service providers are really good at doing this on something like a website or something like a one-to-one conversation with people.
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But the problem is we can't get someone into that conversation or we're not getting the traffic to that landing page without the front-end marketing doing the same thing.
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We need to be able to help them identify what's actually going wrong, helping them to understand why their current approach is not working, helping them to recognize that there is a better way and to see your solution as a logical next step.
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I want you to think about your marketing as a way for people to move through a decision, right?
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So they start with attention, then they become aware, then they start to get a better understanding, then they start to desire the solution, and then they start to take action.
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Your marketing has to feed every single part of that decision-making process, right?
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Your overall marketing ecosystem needs to help them make a decision.
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If all you're doing is creating content that people enjoy consuming, you're creating entertainment, but not necessarily marketing.
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And chances are, if you're here, you're not interested in becoming an influencer or a full-time content creator, you are simply only using social media, marketing content, wherever it is you're showing up to actually run a business.
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Once you've done all this, you shifted your content to be more about them, you are having a better understanding of their problem, helping them have a better understanding of their problem and their options for solutions.
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You start to really speak to every single piece of that decision-making process.
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Now you actually have to guide them somewhere.
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This is something that I see missed so, so, so often is we have to stop thinking that people are just gonna figure out what to do next.
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This idea of like, well, they're grown adults and it's so obvious.
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No, okay, they're consuming so much information on a minute-by-minute basis that we have to tell them exactly what to do next.
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And that next thing has to be really, really clear, low friction, low barrier to entry, easy, right?
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It should be a really clear, easy next step, and your call to action from your marketing should tell them exactly what that is.
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Not to mention the fact, okay, that there also has to be a compelling enough reason for them to actually take it.
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The next step has to make sense with whatever the content or the piece of marketing is talking about.
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It has to be something that they're actually gonna want, right?
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And something that they're actually going to take action on.
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People need to understand why they're doing something in order to be more likely to actually do it.
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So whether that's downloading a freebie, filling out an application, DMing you for more information, or getting on a sales call, just to name a few, they have to be really clear on like why am I doing this?
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Now there is a major caveat, okay, to this conversation.
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The caveat is that there will be a segment to your audience of people who are simply not ready.
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And that is okay.
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There's things that we can do to increase buyer readiness from our content, but at the end of the day, we can't force people to be ready.
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And the problem is not in the small segment of your audience that's not ready, it's where the problem comes in if you feel like everyone is not ready, or that a majority of your audience are the people who are not ready.
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That's where you have to take a look at whether your marketing is actually doing its job to turn that visibility into demand and buyer readiness.
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Your job is not to force them, right?
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Or to convince them.
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Your job is to facilitate the decision, to give the information, to show your value, to show your expertise, and let them make the decision.
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You're guiding them there with how you strategically show up in your marketing.
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But that's a really important thing that we have to really check in with ourselves about is it's okay for people to not be ready.
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A common thing I see this in is any kind of health and wellness industry.
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Okay, like personal trainers.
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There's gonna be a segment of your audience who's not ready to lose weight, they're not ready to take action on that.
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If you're a chiropractor, you're gonna have a segment of your audience who's not ready for long-term preventative maintenance care.
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It's just that those people should only make up a small segment of your audience and not the majority of your audience.
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That's the biggest distinguisher.
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So if you've made it this far and you're like, yes, Sarah, I have a fangirl problem.
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People know me and they like me and they engage, and I know I'm getting the visibility and I'm getting the engagement on my content, all these things, right?
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People are watching.
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You don't necessarily need to stop creating the content that is getting the attention.
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You just need to make sure that you make these shifts in your content that allow for you to show up more strategically from a marketing standpoint to say yes, and I actually offer a service so that people not only know you and like you and love you and engage with you, but they also clearly understand what your expertise is, how you can help them, and it's helping them make that decision to move forward.
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At the end of the day, I would rather you have a hundred people who really truly understand exactly what you do, what problem you solve, and they're actually considering working with you as opposed to 10,000 people just engaging and watching and telling you how cool you are.
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Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Think Like a CMO.
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If this particular episode helped you think about your marketing in a new way, go ahead and follow the show so you don't miss any future episodes.
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And do me a favor, drop a little review, drop a little love, share it in your Instagram story, share this with someone else so that this podcast can help someone else with their marketing as well.
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If you're ready to tighten up your own strategy and to make a marketing plan that actually works, check out the free resources in the show notes.
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Okay, everything you'll need is linked there.
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You can also find the link to get on my calendar to book a complimentary clarity call so that you can navigate exactly what marketing support could look like for you and for your business.
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And remember, you're already the CMO of your business.
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It's just time that you start thinking like one.